


Set fire to the stars

by sian22



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Desire, Disability, Fea-mates, First Time, Hesitation, M/M, fallling in love, one back, poison and pain, two steps forward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-19 22:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5983162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian22/pseuds/sian22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theomund, Prince of Ithilien has spent his life building a strong defense, caging his heart.  Afraid.  Of rejection, of heartbreak, of the oceans that swell within.  Thalon, Legolas’ second in command, has seen Ages more, yet he too has resigned himself to be alone.   One day, fate brings them together in a way neither could expect.  What the fea wants cannot be denied  yet courage, even for a warrior, is a difficult thing to muster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a candle in the dark

How did I know? It was his hands.

Soft and sure, so exquisitely gentle even as they without ceremony administered the antidote as one would a gwinig. I should have been embarrassed perhaps..sensitive to a foreign touch but I was not. Pain was a white hot brand and all was dark and in the darkness the only light was the soothing of that touch.

I was dying.

I knew it even as the first of the seizures took hold: I lying, still and silent in my prince’s arms. Each pound of hoof on turf was white hot agony. My heart cried out in anguish. We had waded through so much blood, so many battles, that to fall now to a haphazard skirmish in Morgul duin: it seemed cruel. I had stayed. Though Amron had fallen, I had stayed. For my brother-in-law and for my father-King, for the people I considered my own though I was not one of them, Noldo as I am.

Now, prisoner of a failing body, my sight dimmed. The pain lanced each time a seizure gripped. In time there was no sound, no sight. Legolas’ anxious voice had been before, pleading with me to stay. Now there was only darkness and that touch.

Perhaps I screamed. I must have when the wound was cleaned: the sticky ichor of the poison dragged out and a salve without ceremony shoved into the wound.

But again there came that touch. A fea so beautiful, so gentle and golden it was a treasure. How sad to know it here when all was darkening.   Millenia I had been alone, my mate lost and never expecting to know that joy again, or desire or true touch.

Perhaps at the end this was a boon. I would know such beauty all too briefly before I walked Namo’s halls.

At last the hazy pain took me down.


	2. distractions

 

I awoke, stiff and pained, with a sense of utter unreality.    The world came back again.

Beyond my eyelids there seemed to be light and under my fingers there was soft cool cloth.  The air felt soft and warm and the sound of birds, quiet footsteps came dimly to my ears.  The smell of spring was strong…

This was far from the quiet, hushed sense of reverence I had expected of the Halls of Waiting.   If I did not know better I would have said the space also smelled faintly of the woody bitterness of willow bark.  Of mint and athelas and vervain.  Of the healing hall come to think of it. 

 If this was hallucination and I was truly dead it was so distinct as not to really matter.  _Just lie Thalon, let yourself just be._

But it seemed, when pressed, I could not even listen to myself.  An urgent need to open my eyes rose up.  I tried but the lids felt glued, t _hey_ would not obey but something must have moved.   

“Commander!”  The elleth’s voice from just beyond my feet was soft but bright with hope and clear surprise.    “Mistress..I think he is awake!”

Another pair of light soft steps were clear and gentle fingers touched my own.  “Este..….”

A blessed cool, wet compress was dabbed at the corners of my eyes.  The crust loosened with my blinking and thin lattice walls, green ones, not white marble covered in tapestry, came hazily into view.   It was Ithilien, my Prince’s green and fragrant realm, and I was imagining I was alive and for the moment grateful beyond words.

Of course I had not yet tried to move.  That effort, just to raise my head for a slightly better view, proved that my miraculous consciousness was entirely a mixed blessing.

Saralinde’s soothing voice, the dulcet, unflappable and calming tones of the Hall’s Master healer, came near at my awkward squawk.   “Have you much pain, mellon nin?” 

Oh I did, yet somehow I could not get speech out, my reluctant mouth would not form the required shape for words.   

She must have spied my restless painful shifting for something cool and wet, a reed was pressed to my lips.   “Just a little now.” 

Lemon and honey did not quite hide the bitterness of poppy. I grimaced but soon enough time stretched and the clawing teeth of hurt slunk away to find another victim.   

 

* * *

 

 

“Awake again?”

Warm and definitely alive fingers lifted my wrist to check my pulse.   Blinking groggily at Master Saralinde’s heart-shaped face I decided that if this was the same hallucination _twice_ in a single day it was was yet likely I was still bound to Middle-Earth.    _Valar be praised._

This time I managed to croak out a semblance of a sentence as the light swam queasily around the edges of indistinct but blunted pain. 

 “Commander Thalon..it has been three days.”   

_Oh._

While I lay and tried not to worry the loss of time the Master and her assistant busied themselves with dressings and cloths and wonderfully warm water (my skin _hurt_ but felt itchy also with grime and time. It was good to be somewhat clean again).  It seemed ungrateful to ask where the _other_ healer was while being tended with such gentle care so I left my most urgent question to wait a bit.  My difficulty speaking made such a complex sentence pointless anyway and more to the point I did not know his name to ask.

I lay and let them fuss and racked my fuzzy brain to think of _who_.  For certain it had been a he…that beautiful fea was male.  There had been an evening in the hall, some months back, a new denizen of the groves introduced, but I had taken out a new patrol to the Crossings and missed the formal welcome.   What that who it was?  A new healer for the Hall? 

So much concentration began to hurt.  Frustrated, I lay back and heaved a sigh, bit back a noise when fingers probed the tender space around the mound.

“Mistress.?”   I did not know what the question was but knew it had been asked.  Saralinde nodded to her assistant who scurried out.  

 The Master Healer smiled and bent again to her task.  “You will forgive us Commander for taking things a little slow.  We are a little in uncertain territory.”    

 _Just what did she mean by that?_    Clearly she sensed my frustration, took it for a warrior’s impatience with restriction.  In another time and place she would not be have been far wrong. 

The young elleth was not gone long before I heard another pair of footsteps and the lattice door swung smoothly open.

Tall, disgustingly vital, unusually anxious, Legolas, my Lord and Prince, strode hurriedly into the room.  

He looked… disheveled.   As if he had slept in his braids and not redone them.  As if the heavy bags under his eyes could have hidden half a flett.   His belt was notched a hole too loose and his tunic tie mis-threaded.    My usually immaculate honour-brother looked worried and thrilled and hesitant all at once, as if holding a precious treasure that had been glued but a moment before. 

So wrapped up was I in my need to _know_ I had not thought of him until that very moment.  I felt chagrined.  My tendency to joke at the most inappropriate moments came to the fore.

 “I am relieved, toren, that you changed your tunic.”   

The last thing I remembered clearly was spewing bile across his lap. 

The slate grey eyes I knew so well flicked to Saralinde, asked permission before I was engulfed in an excruciatingly careful hug. 

“Thalon, thank the Valar you are the most stubborn ellon I know.  This is the second time you have cheated Namo of your company.” 

I tried to grin.   “I hate the idea of making small talk with a few thousand other souls.”   

 “I thought you might.”  He chuckled and so did I, though mine was faint and garbled. “Elrond’s training does not stick with some.”    

 _Nienna what a relief._   We were joking even if the tone was over bright.  Taken by a recklessly overwhelming urge to raise my hand, to clasp his forearm and give my heartfelt thanks, I found my heart had suddenly blocked my throat. 

Centuries of brotherhood and I still found it hard to express the true depth of our bond.  Legolas, far more adept than I with words in any language, settled for simply grinning broadly at my awkward snort. 

 _Oh thank you._  

My eyes were irritated.  They watered my cheeks a little while he pulled up a chair beside the bed. 

For the next half candlemark he filled  me in on the details I had missed.   The hours of terrified uncertainty.  The repeated desperate dosing of the antidote.  The two days of stricken wondering if I would, if I could, come to myself again or simply fade away.   

“Theo was just magnificent, Thalon.  So calm even as he worked so fast.” he said, sharing an approving glance with Saralinde.  “I am still amazed that he could discern the poison from just a smell.”

“His nose is certainly large enough.”  The Master Healer’s green eyes danced in mischief but I ignored them for my heart had suddenly fluttered wildly in my chest.   My Prince had said it.  That name.  I had heard it in my delirium but now I knew. 

 “Ernilen, was Master Theomund at table?”  Saralinde paused in her jotting of a note upon a handy parchment.  I had noticed that she seemed to be writing an awful lot.   I shifted uncomfortably, feeling a little like a curious specimen.

“Yes he was. “ Legolas answered. “For a little while. He left just before your message came.”

She rose and beckoned to a young assistant outside the door.  “Keilin would you please let Master Theomund know his patient is awake…”   The young elleth bobbed her head and hastened on her errand.

After a few more moments of carefully light-hearted, non-taxing chat and a certain amount of distracted watching of the door on my part, I began to wonder what Legolas was making of my mental state.  We were having a rather one-sided conversation.  It felt rude but I simply _had_ to know, had to see my ellon of the beautiful fea the instant he came through the door. 

I _had_ nearly died, so hopefully I was allowed to be a little pre-occupied with present life.

Distracted, I had not noticed that suddenly Legolas was rising, turning to greet someone all in blue: not the drab grey healer’s robes of Mirkwood but the dark indigo favoured by those of Rivendell.  He walked slowly, almost haltingly, toward my Prince and bent his head to touch his heart in greeting. 

 I caught my first clear glimpse of my saviour and was, in short, confused. 

Though I had lived in Mirkwood for long and long I still thought I should know all who worked in the last Homely house: it had been my home for much of my three hundred centuries (my naneth still lived in the vale and I journeyed back to see her as often as my duties would permit) but still I did not recognize him.

Tall and lithe, with a fineness to his features that was almost Silvan, his nose as advertised was aquiline and almost Numenorean in scale, just a little too large for outright beauty.  Master Healer Theomund  was striking, even handsome, with an easy charm, an assurance in the space that was comforting but not overbearing.  His hair, the pure wheat-gold of the house of Finarfin, was tied back in a single plait down his back in the style favoured by the Peredhel.   There was a seriousness to his blue-grey eyes that seemed warranted given his occupation and yet there was something of the lines about his mouth and brow that spoke of humour.

I could not tear my gaze away. 

He was, quite simply, stunning.       

Reminding myself to close my mouth, I watched as he stood, just beyond my Prince, speaking quietly with Saralinde,  resting a hand upon her shoulder and looking her notes.  I could not put my finger on it but there was something distinct, different, about how he stood.   The healer moved almost a little stiffly, with a subtle hesitation and as I (quite rudely) stared it seemed he looked a little different in his carriage too.  Broader through the shoulders.   I wondered for a moment if he was Sindar but his hair was not so sillky fine as Thranduil’s, was even wavy where a long tendril had escaped the braid.   

Perhaps he felt my steady gaze or perhaps he was simply finished his consult. but before I could ponder more Theomund had looked up,  taken a slow and measured step toward the bed, and quite unconsciously raised a hand to tuck the errant strand back behind his ear.

 It was then I saw. 

He was a man.   

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much to Wynja2007 for giving me the courage to get this going


End file.
